No family is immune to this scourge
heather knight wrote that it was a tense tuesday morning in san francisco when christina lacourt went to her son’s bedroom to wake him for school. the door was locked, but she forced it open. inside, she saw her son lying on his bed with a bluish face and bulging veins. a black fluid was oozing from his nose and mouth onto the bedsheets.
she quickly retrieved two doses of narcan, which she kept in a kitchen drawer just in case, for the very moment she had always dreaded. however, the drug did not revive him. she wept in anguish and screamed in despair as she called 911. her normally charming apartment was transformed into a gray, hazy scene filled with paramedics, police officers, and forensic experts. she watched in agonizing pain as her son’s body was carried away in a plastic bag for an autopsy.
she was certain that her son had died from fentanyl, but the autopsy report made no mention of it. instead, it contained a completely new word: cyclophane. it was the first time the substance had appeared in a san francisco coroner’s report.
research revealed that the previously unknown drug that killed her son, as police later confirmed at a press conference, was a synthetic opioid far more lethal than fentanyl, which was still claiming dozens of lives in the city every month.
cyclophane is part of a new class of deadly drugs flooding the illicit drug market and unsettling cities that are only beginning to grapple with the fentanyl crisis. its latest victim was the beautiful american singer and actress hayden pantry, aged 36.
cyclophane can be manufactured by amateur chemists almost anywhere, and its effects on the human body are notoriously difficult to reverse or counteract. experts indicate that cyclophane is ten times more potent than fentanyl. test strips can detect fentanyl but cannot detect cyclophane. an overdose of this new drug may require multiple doses of the overdose-reversal medication narcan, although most people carry only one or two doses at a time.
this drug has appeared in europe and on the east coast of the united states over the past two years, and its presence is spreading like an octopus’s tentacles.
undoubtedly, the emergence of this deadly and difficult-to-treat narcotic is a major concern for security authorities in every country, especially those where young people have ample financial means, such as kuwait.
these drugs are easy to manufacture, smuggle, and distribute, while the enormous profits drive many smugglers to risk their lives to distribute them. therefore, it is unfair to leave the task of combating these drugs solely to security authorities, and we must all share in their concerns.
this requires the cooperation of every family, including reporting cases of addiction so that treatment can be provided before it is too late.
the tireless efforts of our anti-drug heroes, who work day and night, deserve our utmost praise. they also need our support and gratitude.
we live in a world that grows more dangerous every day, and no family is immune to the threat of new and deadly drugs. this scourge can strike even those who believe themselves to be safe or immune.
